鍼灸領域におけるレーザーの臨床応用

抄録

Acupuncture and moxibustion remained as a folk remedy for a long time, because of hardly understandable Yin-Yang and five elements theory. But the success of surgical operation by the acupuncture anesthesia came into prominence all over the world. Soon it cleared that naloxone reduces the analgesic effect by acupuncture and then systematic studies on the acupuncture have been developed. The essentials of the acupuncture points and channels are unknown, however the acupuncture points are detectable as the low impedance points on the skin and laser irradiation to them is therapeutically effective in the following diseases; muscle contraction headache, stiff neck, frozen shoulder, back pain, lumbago, tennis elbow, sprain, vascular headache, trigeminal neuralgia, postherpetic neuralgia, sciatica, gonalgia, rheumatoid arthritis, Raynaud's phenomenon, toothache, gingivitis, tonsillitis, etc, Both inflammatory and non-inflammatory pain are relieved ha the laser acupuncture, although it is always accompanied with placebo-effect in high rate. Neural and humoral alterations by the laser biostimulation are briefly summarized and discussed based on biophysical aspects.